One Day’s Mad Is The Next Day’s Madcap

At the end of another long and all-too-serious week, I thought I’d offer up something a little offbeat.

In the past couple weeks, I’ve found myself alternating, almost by the post, between the the crippling (reality of the) recession and the combined drama and farce playing out inside the Beltway. Over this stretch in particular, the BNN readership has been impressive in studying and calling out almost any and all evidence of privilege, posturing or false empathy in the visual narrative between Main Street and all those power boulevards.

Not to rip Senator Conrad, in particular, or any of the good people of the media, but the expressions here, and the disembodied hands, and the electronics all seem to culminate in a madcap sense, framing “the people’s business” taking place in the Capitol as, way-too-often, an antic, ritualistic dance.

At the same time, given the pictures we’ve been seeing from Detroit, and Cleveland, and Sacramento, and Adams County, Colorado and just yesterday, Fresno, we know the reality is far less madcap than mad, with an absolutely different kind of dancing going on.

(image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) (C) is surrounded by reporters after a closed-door meeting of the Senate Democratic caucus at the U.S. Captiol March 25, 2009 in Washington, DC. President Barack Obama joined the caucus at the Captiol to discuss his budget proposal.)